Amnesty International reported that Cuba's repressive legal system has resulted in an atmosphere of fear for journalists, dissidents and activists, "putting them at risk of arbitrary arrest and harassment."
President Evo Morales enacted an electoral law that is drawing criticism from the opposition and the press for being a gag for the media during election times, reported La Razón.
The prosecutor's office believes it has sufficient evidence to charge Guillermo Zuloaga, president of the news station Globovisión, the only channel critical of the government still on the air in Venezuela, reported El Universal.
Journalist Márcia Pache, from TV Centro-Oeste, affiliate of SBT in Pontes e Lacerda, west of Cuiabá, was hit in the face on Monday, June 28, by Councilman Lorivaldo Rodrigues de Moraes (DEM), known as "Kirrarinha," according to the website Midia News.
Radio sports reporter Clóvis Silva Aguiar, 48 years old, was murdered Thursday night, June 24, in the city of Imperatriz, in the western part of Maranhão in Brazil, reported the newspaper Jornal Pequeno. He was in the door of his mother's house when two men on a motorcycle drove by and shot at him three times, the newspaper said.
Clarín, a major Argentine newspaper, published an editorial Tuesday, June 29, accusing Cristina Kirchner's administration of “systematically attacking the independent press” and creating an “apparatus of private and state media to advertise for the government.” Clarín maintains a troubled relationship with the government.
For three days in a row, Puerto Rico's Senate President, Thomas Rivera Schatz, prohibited the press from entering the Senate floor, reported El Nuevo Día. This was an unprecedented event in the Senate's history.
Two unidentified, armed assailants went to the home of journalist Juan Francisco Rodríguez Ríos and his wife María Elvira Hernández Galeana, where they ran an Internet cafe in Coyuca de Benítez, in the southern state of Guerrero, and shot them to death, reported El Universal.
Vicky Peláez, a Peruvian journalist based in New York, is among 10 people the United States has arrested and accused of being secret agents for Russia, reported the Associated Press. The network of informants supposedly was dedicated to recruiting political sources and compiling secret information to send to Moscow, added El País.
One year after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from office, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, according to the International Press Institute. The article includes a timeline of the murders of Honduran journalists in 2010.
Christopher Coke, an alleged drug kingpin central to recent violence and unrest in Kingston, was arrested and extradited to the U.S. last week, but Jamaican media outlets were blocked from covering the arrest and were forced to rely on images taken by foreign photographers, the Jamaica Observer reports.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has released its 2010 survey of journalists living in exile.